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For the bargain-basement asking price of £1.5million, you can live in a different room every day of the year. Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, a spectacular 250-year-old Georgian house which was once the seat of the Rockingham family, is up for sale, forming the grand finale of a flamboyant story worthy of Gatsby. The 365-room house, one of Europe's largest and most imposing private houses and described as "one of the greatest buildings of the Georgian era", stands in 85 acres.

Naturally there's a catch. A house this large costs a fortune to maintain - and it needs a lot of work doing on it - around £10 million worth in fact. Hence the bargain-basement price, relatively speaking at least.

It is on the market after its owner, Wensley Haydon-Baillie went into voluntary liquidation with debts of £13 million.

Haidon-Baillie, the son of a surgeon from Worksop, Nottinghamshire, started his dramatic rise to being one of the richest 50 men in the country, in the Seventies.

At the height of his fortune he was owner - apart from Wentworth - of Cope House, Kensington, the only British-owned house in Millionaire's Row, and Newton Park, another spectacular Georgian pile in the New Forest, near the property of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.

From buying undervalued companies, he got involved in pharmaceuticals, investing in the company Porton International, which claimed it was developing a cure for herpes. On the crest of that promise, in the Eighties, Porton secured £76 million from the City.

Haidon-Baillie's career rocketed and in classic rags-to-riches mode, he started living it up. Wentworth Woodhouse, on whose gravel drives Haydon-Baillie would have his six Rolls-Royces lined up each morning for inspection, hosted flamboyant pheasant shoots and other country pursuits.

Having courted Mary Montagu, daughter of his Beaulieu neighbour, Haidon-Baillie married Samantha Acland, a secretary, in 1994. Prince Michael was best man. But the showy lifestyle, Savile Row suits and energetic hobnobbing were an expensive taste. Haidon-Baillie fell into debt. In 1998 he owed almost £7 million to one Swiss bank and couldn't even pay his television licence.

Last year, works of art formerly housed at the mansion fetched more than £10 million at auction. Now the bricks and mortar are on the market. Conservationists want to see the property preserved intact for posterity.

Alan Taylor, who has managed the house for 13 years, said: "It is on a palatial scale with rooms to match any house in Europe. Its beauty has survived for almost 300 years and it would be a terrible shame if it was not preserved for future generations."